Should managers, when taking investment decisions, follow the signals given by the stock market even when those do not coincide with their own assessment of fundamentals? Do they? In this paper, the authors review theoretical arguments and examine the empirical evidence. First, they look at the...

Product and labor market deregulation reduce and redistribute rents, leading economic players to adjust to this new distribution. It typically comes with distribution and dynamic effects. To study these effects, we build a macroeconomic model on two central assumptions: monopolistic competition...

This essay argues that the history of macroeconomics during the twentieth century can be divided into three epochs. Pre-1940: a period of exploration, during which all the right ingredients were developed. But also a period where confusion reigned, because of the lack of an integrated framework....

This paper characterizes the dynamic effects of shocks in government spending and taxes on U. S. activity in the postwar period. It does so by using a mixed structural VAR/event study approach. Identification is achieved by using institutional information about the tax and transfer systems to...

Under central planning, many firms relied on a single supplier for critical inputs. Transition has led to decentralized bargaining between suppliers and buyers. Under incomplete contracts or asymmetric information, bargaining may inefficiently break down and, if chains of production link many...

The authors present a model of bargaining between politicians and managers that explains many stylized facts about the behavior of state firms, their commercialization, and privatization. Subsidies to public enterprises and bribes from managers to politicians emerge naturally in the model. The...

In cooperation with Lex Mundi member law firms in 109 countries, we measure and describe the exact procedures used by litigants and courts to evict a tenant for nonpayment of rent and to collect a bounced check. We use these data to construct an index of procedural formalism of dispute...

We present new data on the regulation of entry of start-up firms in 85 countries. The data cover the number of procedures, official time, and official cost that a start-up must bear before it can operate legally. The official costs of entry are extremely high in most countries. Countries with...

A central requirement in the design of a legal system is the protection of law enforcers from coercion by litigants through either violence or bribes. The higher the risk of coercion, the greater the need for protection and control of law enforcers by the state. Such control, however, also makes...

When world trade is costly, a country can profitably industrialize only if its domestic markets are large enough. In such a country, for increasing returns technologies to break even, sales must be high enough to cover fixed setup costs. The authors suggest two conditions conducive to...